Astrobotic Chief Executive John Thornton speaks at a June 15 event unveiling the company’s Griffin-1 lunar lander. Credit: Astrobotic
PITTSBURGH — Lunar lander developer Astrobotic decided to sell to Voyager Technologies so it could quickly scale up to meet the projected demands of NASA’s lunar base initiative.
Voyager announced June 2 that it reached an agreement to acquire Astrobotic for $162 million in cash and stock and the assumption of $9 million in debt. The deal includes up to an additional $129 million in earnout payments contingent on meeting performance milestones.
The announcement took many in the industry by surprise. Astrobotic is a 19-year-old company that had not relied on significant outside investment, choosing instead to bootstrap the company with customer contracts. That included NASA awards for the Peregrine lunar lander, launched in 2024, and its Griffin-1 lander, which the company unveiled June 15 for launch late this year.
In an interview at the event, John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, said the decision to sell the company to Voyager came after concluding that it was the fastest approach to scaling up the company to meet NASA’s needs after the agency announced its lunar base plans at the Ignition event in March.
